The Roadmap to Operational Excellence

Everything I do, write about, or talk about one way or another helps businesses on different stages (and we'll talk stages a bit below) to achieve Operational Excellence.

Some of the businesses want to go just 1 stage above, some of them are missing the right tools or the right focus, and some of them do not see an end to the chaos or do not know what else can be improved.

Sounds like a bunch of different companies but in reality it can be 1 company on the road to Operational Excellence.

I spent some time building a roadmap that includes all those stages companies go through.

I am sure you can identify yours as well!

Let's get to it, shall we?

The Roadmap!

I won't hold it to myself anymore. Here is the roadmap:

Let's go over all the milestones:

Blank Ops;
Amateur Ops;
Advanced Ops;
Operational Excellence.

As you've seen on the roadmap, every time you want to get to the next level, you have to go through a period of struggles, be it Chaos to get to Amateur Ops, Development to get to Advanced Ops, or Fine-Tuning to get to the Operational Excellence.

WARNING! This is not a one-way road. Yes, you heard it right. Getting to Amateur Ops does not mean that you cannot fall back into Chaos. In most cases, it is a lot of back and forth until the next level can be secured.

First Step

The first step to getting to Operational Excellence is identifying what stage you are currently in.
To help you do that, I will write down a small list of characteristics per stage below.

Blank Operations

You are a solopreneur or a small team (up to 5 people) that is just starting their business;
You potentially have a few customers and are going through a proof of concept;
You manage your business using pen and paper, or a bunch of spreadsheets and feel that it is more than enough;
You do not have an organizational structure or it is long outdated. People are not familiar with the concept of processes. Documentation is simply absent;
You do not measure your performance and do not have anything to measure the quality of the products or services you deliver;
Business Owner works in operations as part of the team (if not solo). Everyone on the team wears multiple hats. A business Owner is a salesperson, a marketing pro, a recruiter, a customer support, and many more;
You do not sign any contracts with the customers and all your relationships with them are pretty much casual;
Customers are generally happy with your products/services and nothing seems to be looking suspicious;

If you recognize yourself above, then that's the stage you are in!
That's a great stage to prepare for what's coming and potentially ease the upcoming chaos.

Chaos

You experience almost everything from Blank Operations;
You started acquiring more customers and hence you've seen a need to expand your team;
You started putting in more hours of work than ever before. Your schedule went sideways and your lifestyle is getting affected;
You are struggling to find great talent whom you can trust and hence you spend a lot of time training them and reviewing their work before delivering to customers;
Customers are noticing the fluctuation in quality - both, of customer service and your products/services. Some of them are on the edge of leaving you;
You feel like the only solution is to throw more human bodies at the problem or say no to a few customers to reduce the pressure;
You are not sure what went wrong as you did not notice how you went from Blank Operations to Chaos;
Your margins got reduced as well and you are wondering if all this is worth it.

If you experience a certain extent of the above issues, then you are right in the middle of Chaos.
That's when getting things organized and building the right strategy are game changers.
I'll be talking more about it in the next blog articles.

Amateur Operations

You found your way from Chaos and finally, things are getting stabilized;
You still feel the burning ass and are pushing hard to close the Chaos Door by all means available;
You see the light at the end of the tunnel and now it is closer than ever before;
You understand the value of the organizational chart and documentation and have the first initiatives to create these assets;
Your team is getting familiarized with the concept of processes and is producing the first drafts of the same;
You have already substituted your to-do list with a project management tool and have the first thoughts of measuring the quality of the output and the output itself;
You are working on the talent acquisition strategy and thinking about how to speed everything up;
You started paying more attention to the cash flow and what factors affect it;
You started paying less attention to sales and your sales strategy is absent;
Your number one priority is to fix the Operations so that you can focus on growing business.

If you feel like this is a description of your business, then congratulations you have just entered the Amateur Operations stage!
You are still in danger of falling back to Chaos and that's just the right time to start Development!

Development

You finally went through the realization process described in the Amateur Operations section and got to work ON your business;
You build your first Organizational Chart and share it with the team;
You are going through the process of documenting absolutely everything;
Your team talks about processes and process maps;
Your project management tool is growing and your team members are going through a series of trainings to learn new tools and techniques;
Your team understands the value of streamlining operations and is searching for ways to achieve it;
You can say that you have a solid foundation and you are starting to build on top of it;
Your Chaos Door is shut tight;
Your operations became scalable and you are not afraid of growth;
You finally have a strategy to leave the business operating without you and focus on scaling it (sales and partnerships);
You probably hired and fired a lot of people and finally stabilized your employee turnover rate;
You are working on establishing KPIs and measuring performance;
You are gaining trust with customers and their satisfaction level goes up.

This is an iterative stage, where companies take two steps forward, and one step back multiple times.

This is when you test whatever you are developing, break it, rebuild again, and test again until you find the magic formula that works for you and your businesses.

This is the stage of balancing your attention between sales to keep the business alive and operations to keep the business operating.

For every business, it is different and a lot of factors affect how the development stage would look like for you.

If you succeed, you will arrive at the Advanced Operations.

If not, you are too stuck in the development stage or worse even, operate on the edge of Amateur Ops with the Chaos Door wide open.

Advanced Operations

You went through a series of iterations in the development stage and finally got to the point where everything worked smoothly;
Your team is operating solo, without your participation;
Your KPIs are stable and satisfactory;
A lot of processes have been automated and your costs are optimized;
You have the training materials in place and you learned how to acquire a top-notch talent with little to no issues;
Your team's confidence level is high. They feel and behave like a team (think family);
Your organization is healthy. Finances are in order and profit margins allow you to keep growing and expanding;
Customers trust you and recommend you. Your sales flow in without much of an effort;
Banks trust you and you have a healthy credit line;
Your cash reserves allow you to operate for at least a year with zero profits;
You have access to bigger opportunities that previously were unachievable;
Your business is 100% sellable and replicable;
You are a thought leader in your industry.

Congratulations, this is an amazing place to be!
A lot of companies do not see a reason to move past this stage as this is a perfect place that allows you to deliver quality, keep your products and services accessible, have healthy margins, and have a sane expansion rate.

Fine Tuning

You did not settle for Advanced Operations and decided to take your organization to a different level.

WARNING! You are entering dangerous grounds. Companies coming from Advanced Operations are overly confident and forget to evaluate the risks of leaving the comfort zone of Advanced Operations.
The last path to Operational Excellence is associated with increased costs and high investments. If not careful, this can quickly empty your cash reserves and force your company to rapidly shrink.

Your team went through a series of trainings and is actively practicing Six Sigma to take your processes to a different level;
Your leadership team consistently attends leadership training and thought leaders events to learn about the best practices and the latest innovations that can be implemented in your organization;
You are developing your own training center whose main goal will be to train the new team members and re-training the existing ones;
You are working on defining clear career paths in your organization and are thinking about the opportunities of life-time-employment;
You are working on the projects of developing your own technology to support and automate your operations;
You are compiling your company way handbook;
You are working in the R&D department whose main goal will be to stay ahead of the market and push innovations;
You partner with other market leaders to learn from the best and advance.

As you can see, all the above endeavors require a lot of cash reserves to be able to safely implement and maintain in your organization.
Those are not one-time investments but annual budget allocations.
This can be a decades-long stage and not all companies can or want to survive it.

Operational Excellence

Cannot believe you've got here!

You are a Global Organization;
You have multiple Master Black Belts in the leadership;
Your company is 100% data-driven;
You have a well-established training center and training programs;
You have well-defined career paths for your team members to grow inside the organization;
You have the liberty to offer and guarantee lifetime employment;
You have your own technology and a high level of automation;
Business Schools are arriving to study your company way and how you were able to get to Operational Excellence;
You are an industry standard;
You do not compete, you help your competitors achieve what you achieved, providing training and insights into your way;
You are an industry innovator and actively sharing new technology with your competitors;
You have a small margin of error and can call yourself a Six Sigma organization;
Some of your leaders are either public speakers or released their books;
You are an enterprise.

Every stage is an exciting place to be with its own challanges and learnings!
If you are trying to survive through Chaos and looking for guidance working your way through the Development stage and are missing some tools or are enjoying the comfort of Advanced Operations and looking to enter into Fine Tuning, you are in the right place!

Through the content I craft, you will get the right tools and techniques to get through the stage you are in or to enter the next one.

My promise is simple: I help you get to the next level.

Subscribe to my newsletter and get your personalized content.